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Manpower has become a crucial theme within the historiography of the First World War in Britain and the former Dominions. Beginning with the social turn in history from the 1960's, historians in Australia, Britain, Canada and New Zealand have considered many aspects of manpower, including the procurement, composition and strategic distribution of men between 1914 and 1918. The recruitment and expansion of civilian armies, including the advent of conscription in most parts of the British Empire, has dominated this trend, which represented the growing desire to understand the societal impact of war. Yet, national reinforcement policies, as part of the broader imperial war effort, has received insubstantial attention. This is surprising when considering its importance in continuing the strategy of attrition, which was adopted by the Commander-in-Chief, Field Marshal Sir Douglas Haig, from 1916. It was critical to sustaining the imperial army throughout extensive campaigns and, without one, frontline units would have collapsed under the weight of their own casualties. Therefore, this thesis will explore the creation and development of reinforcement policy and practice for the British and Dominion forces between 1914 and 1918. It will consider how Britain and, to some extent, the Dominions, principally Australia, Canada and New Zealand, responded to industrial warfare and attempted to sustain their armed forces throughout a war of attrition. It will consider how they, as well as the British-led imperial army, created and developed reinforcement systems that stretched back to each nation. It will assess its ability to produce trained reinforcements in a timely manner, as well as how the medical system worked in unison to 'recycle' wounded veterans back into the frontline. By framing this research within a comparative framework, the thesis shall examine how British authorities created their own reinforcement policy and attempted to guide and develop this in each Dominion. It will show how the Dominions attempted to weigh imperial desire against their national priorities and, through joint and individualised policies, yielded very different results. Overall, it will demonstrate that the creation of reinforcement policy in the First World War was far from smooth. Its success was erratic and far from efficient, which led to varying levels of hardship within the imperial army. Though some, such as the Canadian Expeditionary Force, were able to offset this with careful manpower management, others, such as the British Expeditionary Force, were pushed to the brink of collapse by 1918.

Throughout history, people have made a conscious choice to imitate their neighbours, and this could be an important facet of cultural change. This thesis explores how and how far the Welsh imitated their neighbours, which neighbours, and why was this the case. While historians have explored this in the context of Europe, Britain or major Welsh principalities, few have paid attention to southeast Wales, a region where Welsh, English and Norman coexisted side-by-side for over two centuries. This study seeks to redress that balance by exploring how far members of the Welsh princely dynasties and gentry families of the region imitated, emulated and integrated with their neighbours, and consider their motives for doing so, and argues that conscious imitation could be demonstrated in the image such individuals presented to others, telling us much about cultural identities. A review of the historical perspectives on cultural change and medieval Wales (Chapter 1) is followed by an analysis of the sources used, including genealogies, poetry, chronicles, charters, seals, heraldry, and castles, and records of the English exchequer (Chapter 2). The study then goes on to explore in turn areas where imitation has been identified and explores some of the motives behind it. Chapter 3 considers Welsh marriage and naming conventions; Chapter 4, the presentation of image through charters, seals and other forms of the written and spoken word: this is complemented in chapter 5 by a study of visual representative means. Chapter 6 considers castle construction as an area adopted by the Welsh. Having explored in each how far the Welsh imitated their neighbours in these various aspects and their reasoning for doing so, Chapter 7 explores how far this emulation translated into wider involvement with their neighbours. The Welsh showed a remarkable variety in the way they imitated their neighbours, both Welsh and Anglo-Norman. Families increasingly adopted seals, heraldry, titles and castles on Anglo-Norman model, intermarried and cooperated with their neighbours. This indicates a change in the way cultural identities were expressed, changes driven by varying considerations of survival, ambition and the complexity of neighbourly relations in the Welsh marches. Through our study of the lesser gentry, we can see these changes gradually filtering through society. The case of the princely dynasties of southeast Wales demonstrate they were at the forefront of cultural change in Wales and can be seen as a microcosm for cultural imitation, emulation and integration in Wales, Britain and Europe.

This study examines the intersection of 'customary' ritual, Catholic religion, and state-centred politics among the Asmat of Indonesian Papua, and how these processes order time and space. Asmat are famous in anthropological and museum worlds for their woodcarving, flamboyant ritual, and pre-colonial practices of headhunting and cannibalism, yet their lives have not been well-studied ethnographically. In the large dual villages of Sa and Er where I undertook long-term fieldwork, Asmat today describe the key problematic of their lives to be how to organise the relationship between ancestral custom, missionary Catholicism, and the Indonesian state, conceptualised as three 'hearths' around which people gather. In Asmat people's heritage political order, people made their livelihoods from autonomous hunting, fishing, and sago processing in spatially dispersed kin groups. Inter-clan cooperation was highly prized but achieved only with difficulty, accomplished in the context of long-running cycles of ancestral ritual. Against that background, the quintessential challenge of contemporary Asmat life today is how to organise activities associated with these three institutional domains so that they are 'mutually supporting', rather than mutually undermining. Asmat people understand such coordination to be critical to broader communal viability, but also increasingly difficult to achieve. Instead, village life is now felt to be pulled in competing directions by the intensifying demands of church and government, in the context of dramatic macrostructural transformations in the character of the Indonesian state at the outer rural periphery associated with policies of administrative and fiscal 'decentralisation'. In this dissertation, I analyse how Asmat people are using the 'hearth' concept, a model of egalitarian social gathering, to order the activities of the church and state within their lives. I begin by examining the 'hearth' as a social organisational image, before tracing the historical development of the 'hearth' problematic. My dissertation then follows villagers' attempts to manage the perturbing presence of Catholicism and the state by encompassing them within the timespace of ritual feasting, with mixed success. Through an extended case study of a feast house construction project, I analyse how ritual is being used to mediate these broader structural orders, but in ways that also transform ritual in turn, with further transformative effects on the broader social order. I examine Asmat use of ritual to mediate custom/church/state relations through an examination of three stages of ritual: inter-clan feast house construction processes, woodcarving and its semiotic mediation of relations with ancestral and other spirit agencies, and host/guest encounters during ritualised hospitality at the peak of feast. While Asmat villagers attempt to transform the organisation of church and state orders to fit within intra-Asmat organisational principles, these institutions are not Asmat-owned, and to varying degrees resist being treated as 'hearths', destabilising Asmat attempts to organise ancestral ritual, church and state as balanced orders of time and space. This dissertation contributes to anthropological understanding of how social life is constituted through processes of space and time, and to understanding how ritual mediates local kinship life and interethnic politics at a state periphery.

Non-photochemical quenching of chlorophyll fluorescence (NPQ) is a photoprotective process that harmlessly dissipates excess excitation energy as heat. qE is the major component of NPQ in plants, starting with a proton gradient (ΔpH) that triggers a conformational change in light harvesting complex II (LHCII), which leads to the creation of a quencher. The protein PsbS and the carotenoid zeaxanthin are also needed for energy dissipation in a natural environment. A major issue for studying qE is that the thylakoid membrane is extremely crowded with protein, making mechanistic analysis a challenge, while studies on isolated LHCII remove the native lipid: protein and protein: protein interactions. In this thesis, a model-membrane approach was taken to study the qE mechanism, as model membranes such as liposomes and nanodiscs bridge the gap between studies of intact thylakoid membranes and isolated complexes. LHCII bound to either violaxanthin or zeaxanthin were separately incorporated into liposomes at various protein concentrations. Increasing the concentration of LHCII in the membrane increased quenching, however the presence of zeaxanthin had no effect on quenching. To probe the effect of the membrane environment, a single LHCII was incorporated into different liposome and nanodisc membranes. Each membrane environment caused some quenching in LHCII, and smaller membrane areas increased both LHCII photodamage and switching between quenched and unquenched conformations. Finally, a fluorescently tagged PsbS construct was incorporated into liposomes, allowing controlled orientation of PsbS in themembrane. The addition of PsbS in its correct orientation to liposomes containing zeaxanthin enriched LHCII significantly increased quenching, even in the absence of ΔpH. Overall, the work presented in this thesis has characterised the effect that PsbS, zeaxanthin, LHCII: LHCII interactions and the membrane itself have on quenching. The advantages and limitations of model membranes are also discussed throughout this thesis.

Platinum and platinum-based materials are desirable catalysts for a plethora of applications due to platinum's high catalytic performance and stability. However, platinum's industrial use is limited due to the availability of platinum resources and the economic cost of obtaining it. Therefore, it is of high importance to improve the catalytic properties of platinum, while in turn decreasing the amount of platinum needed for industrial applications. This would make platinum a more obtainable and usable catalyst for industrial and consumer use. 1,2,3 Mesoporous platinum films have a higher surface area to volume ratio than solid platinum catalysts, which could increase their catalytic activity while reducing the amount of platinum used in synthesising the film. This report explores a variety of methods at producing platinum films by lyotropic liquid crystal templating onto a platinum single crystal surface which is {111} in topography. The film is characterised by cyclic voltammetry, scanning electron microscopy, focused ion beam scanning electron microscopy, and atomic force microscopy. The film synthesis method has been tailored from the methods found in literature to obtain an electrocatalytically active mesoporous platinum film which has uniform surface properties. The film activity has then been compared with the activity of platinum single crystal surfaces for alcohol oxidation. This includes studying the oxidation potential peak maxima and the current density peak maxima and observing how the films compare with the single crystal. It has been established that the Pt film, deposited using a deposition method that has been tailored to give small and uniform pores, has size selectivity towards alcohols with an aliphatic chain length of three or less. This is valuable experimentally for a Pt catalyst film to selectively oxidise alcohols with shorter aliphatic chains (one to three carbons) over larger alcohol molecules with aliphatic chains longer than three carbons.

Keratin fibres are biomaterials which have a high degree of complexity. When analysing their properties, a two-phase structure is applied, where the components are highly ordered, semi-crystalline intermediate filaments (IFs) embedded in an amorphous matrix. Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR) is an analytical method which is widely used in the field of textiles and cosmetic science to obtain knowledge about damage and changes to proteins in the keratin fibres. Milling is a mechanical pre-treatment which is used to obtain powders for, e.g., Transmission-FTIR or other analytical methods. However this process causes thermal damage and physical changes to the proteins and their structure through attrition. Methods to enable us in the determination of the limiting conditions of milling was analysed in this research, optimal conditions with minimum damage to the proteins in the fibres as well as their secondary structures such as the α-helices. DSC results showed that with 25 Hz milling with liquid nitrogen pre-cooling, discontinuously, for up to 40 seconds, there was invariance in results for denaturation temperature (TD) and denaturation enthalpy (ΔHD). This invariance demonstrates that the viscosity of the matrix remains largely unchanged, kinetically impeding the unfolding of IFs to a similar extent as the matrix in reference samples. There was a destabilisation of the IFs for longer treatment times. A lower limiting value of around 133 °C was obtained for the data sets for milled fibres at 60 s, which is associated with the properties of the keratin fibre becoming an increasingly amorphous, highly-crosslinked, thermoset polymer. SDS-PAGE protein analysis shown there was no difference in result to that of the reference sample between all milling conditions and times. Spectral analysis of the Amide I was carried out to provide information of the secondary structures (α-helix, Î2-sheets, turns and unordered) of the proteins; where there was no change with milling times or conditions. This was an unexpected result as DSC data showed that the proteins, especially that of the IFs, were close to complete denaturation. This variance in results can be explained by the term 'latent damage'. Dynamic mechanical properties were observed by the use of a novel sample powder holder to obtain glass transition temperatures (Tg). The results gave a Tg for dry merino wool with the use of glycerol as an inert diluent. Measuring the glass transition as a material compared to historical methods. Advances have been made in a technique to determine the orientation of the intermediate filaments in the cortical cells of keratin fibres. The main objective was to determine if the IFs are aligned in a parallel or anti-parallel manner. Experimental methods were developed where an electric field was produced and was applied to single cortical cells, which were obtained through the process of enzymatic digestion using trypsin. The cells were placed in a media (water) and movement of the cells was observed. The result show movement of the cells, the methodology requires more work and improvements, but this would be a feasible method to answer this question in the future.

In the following thesis, new methodologies which exploit sulfinylamine reagents to enable one-pot syntheses of a range of nitrogen-containing sulfur(VI) functional groups are documented. The union of sulfinylamines with widely available organometallic reagents and amines allows the rapid construction of complex, medicinally relevant sulfoximine, sulfonimidamide and primary sulfonamide products. Chapter 1 is a literature review covering the properties, applications and synthesis of sulfonimidamides and sulfoximines. Chapter 2 describes the development of a new strategy for the preparation of sulfonimidamides. A remarkably stable sulfinylamine reagent, N-sulfinyltritylamine (TrNSO), is identified and used in a one-pot, three component synthesis of N-H sulfonimidamides. Analogues of the anti-arthritis drug Celecoxib are prepared using the method and subjected to biological assays by collaborators at UCB Biopharma. Chapter 3 documents the discovery of a new class of sulfinylamines, O-aryl-Nsulfinylhydroxylamines, that enable the preparation of sulfoximines by the sequential addition of two Grignard reagents, or sulfonimidamides by the sequential addition of a Grignard reagent and an amine. Two possible mechanistic pathways are discussed and evaluated. Chapter 4 details the serendipitous discovery of a one-pot synthesis of primary sulfonamides from the novel reagent O-tert-butyl-N-sulfinylhydroxylamine. Preliminary mechanistic studies are presented. Chapter 5 discusses the conclusion of the research and the potential for future work. Chapter 6 presents the experimental data.

This study presents a practitioner perspective analysis of how gangs, gang members and their associated risks are perceived and policed within the organisational structure of the Metropolitan Police Service (MPS). Drawing on a large-scale survey and in-depth interviews with a variety of gang practitioners, it contrasts and critiques specialist, analytical and local police practice in conceptualising, mapping, monitoring and policing within the gang milieu, focusing on police and partnership use and understanding of the primary tool for gang member management, the MPS Gangs Matrix. Findings highlight a perception of the gang at odds with that captured by the static intelligence mechanisms embedded in operational practice and highlight the tensions created by the complex intra-organisational structures in terms of remit and understanding. It identifies an emerging tendency to align the gang with organised crime; utilising elements of the interconnected theoretical frameworks of interactionism (specifically the activities of the labellers), contextual constructionism, and institutional theory to consider the aetiology and consequences of these actions in the context of policing policy and practice.

In completing this thesis I am attempting to answer the broad question of what golfers should do with their time on the course when they are not executing their shots. Surprisingly, and considering the amount of research within golf that has considered how performance can best be optimised, either by focusing on the development of technique, mental skills, physiological factors, or tactical considerations, this has remained an under-researched area with few authors considering the potential impact of these time periods. In attempting to answer this broad question I present five, substantive chapters, one desktop study, one chapter which explains and justifies the chosen research philosophy and methodologies (Chapter 3), and three empirical studies. These are wrapped in introduction (Chapter 1) and conclusion (Chapter 7) chapters. Chapter 2 critically reviews the extant literature prior to the completion of this thesis. In addition to critiquing existing literature future avenues for research that would fill some of the identified gaps in knowledge are suggested. Adopting a pragmatic philosophical approach Chapter 4 explores the perceptions from golfers and support personnel of what golfers should do on the course when not executing their shots. Results point to the use of a number of novel processes specifically the use of pre2- and post-shot routines, in addition to the impact of caddies at the meso-level of performance. These impacts of these processes and inputs on both player attention and other psychological factors are discussed. Reflecting the suggestion from Chapter 4 of the importance of meso-level processes, Chapter 5 seeks to identify if, and how, high-level golfers use the meso-level processes identified in Chapter 4. The findings suggest that high-level golfers do use the processes identified in Chapter 4 but that the content and application of the processes varies depending upon shot outcome. In particular, post-shot routines need to be adaptive based upon shot outcome. Consequently, the need to develop meta-cognitive skills is also highlighted. In order to close the pragmatic loop and practically apply the knowledge generated in the thesis to that point Chapter 6 takes five high-level golfers through a 10 week intervention. These interventions are aimed at developing the skills and processes discovered in the thesis and assesses both the perceived and performance benefits derived from the interventions. There were notable improvements in performance as a consequence of the interventions, although these were not statistically significant. However, participants did also positively note a number of perceived benefits derived from the interventions including the development of meso-level skills and associated general benefits and improvements. In concluding the thesis, and as per the pragmatic approach adopted, I offer practical suggestions to what golfers should do with the rest of the day and the impact that adopting these processes has on performance. Finally, and in order to provide practically useful findings to practitioners, a model for how to integrate the findings from the thesis is proposed.